A digest of events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism from and about rural America, by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

2015 Pulitzer Prize winners include South Carolina newspaper's series on domestic violence

The 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners included a handful of stories with rural resonance, including stories by The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., and stories by The Seattle Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

The Post and Courier won the Public Service award for a series on domestic violence by Doug Pardue, Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Natalie Caula Hauff. The seres, titled "Til Death Do Us Part," detailed how "more than 300 women have been shot, stabbed, strangled, beaten, bludgeoned or burned to death by men in South Carolina over the past decade, dying at a rate of one every 12 days while the state does little to stem the carnage from domestic abuse." It is the first Pulitzer won by the newspaper since 1925.

The Seattle Times won for Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the deadly Oso landslide that claimed 43 lives. "The coverage, which included stories, photos, video and graphics, revealed that, contrary to public officials’ insistence, there were warnings for decades about the unstable nature of the earth in the region," reports the Times. The award, which is shared by the staff, is the 10th Pulitzer for the newspaper.

Two Pulitzer awards were given for Investigative Reporting. One went to The Wall Street Journal for its story "Medicare Unmaked: Behind the Numbers," which included a database on "payments to more than 880,000 medical providers in 2012 and how doctors and other providers compare with their peers in their region, state or nationwide," the Journal writes.

The other Investigative Reporting award went to Eric Lipton of The New York Times for his story, "Courting Favor," which "examines the explosion in lobbying of state attorneys general by corporate interests and the millions in campaign donations they now provide," the Times writes.

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This blog generally follows traditional journalistic standards. It's not about opinions, though you may read one here occasionally. It's about facts that we think will be useful to rural journalists, non-rural journalists who do rural stories, and others interested in rural issues. We don't try to be provocative, so we don't generate as many comments as most blogs with the level of traffic we have, but we certainly invite comments -- and contributions, to al.cross@uky.edu. Feel free to republish blog items, with credit to us and the original source.